


In Totus Tamen Nomen

by teand



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-13
Updated: 2008-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teand/pseuds/teand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hellhounds have taken Dean leaving Bobby with a grieving Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Totus Tamen Nomen

**Author's Note:**

> Epsiode tag to 316 No Rest for the Wicked. Title translates as: In All But Name

No way that white light blazing out through a crack in the curtains could be considered a good thing, particularly not given the reaction of the demons still milling about at the edge of the lawn. Him and them, they'd been in a holding pattern for a bit now; the demons watching him like they were wondering what else he had up his sleeve and him watching them like… well, like they were demons and his job was to keep them out of the house. They'd leaned toward the light but clearly whatever they thought was going to happen after it faded, didn't. 

Whole bunch of them looked like they'd just slipped their leash. They were still a little tentative, attention still mostly on the house, but they were definitely moving their borrowed bodies away.

Fine. And fuck'em.

Keeping the shotgun pointed across the lawn, Bobby jumped up onto the porch and backed through the front door, not relaxing until it was shut and locked behind him. 

It was quiet. Quiet enough the pounding of his own heart was God-damned near deafening.

Light'd come from the right so that was the way he went. Spared a glance for the old lady dead in the living room but that was all. If Lilith was still around he was getting a piece of her before she took him out.

If Lilith was still around, then the boys…

His brain skittered off that thought like a spider off a grill. Not that it mattered much; if Lilith was still around, he'd be joining them in a minute.

He saw Sam first. Boy was on his knees, head bent, broad shoulders curled in like he could protect the body in his arms. He was so still he might've been carved out of marble, if marble could weep.

Bobby slid his gaze off Sam's grieving to Ruby's body. Or the meat the demon had been wearing, collapsed empty on the floor. Whoever the actual girl had been, well, she was long dead -- had been at least since he'd shot her and likely before that. 

Room was empty otherwise. No sign of Lilith or anything that could be holding her.

Only one thing left to look at.

The hellhounds had savaged Dean's legs dragging him down to get to something vital. Arm had been ripped to shreds where he'd tried to protect himself. Chest was still seeping blood through torn fabric. Bobby let himself hope, just for an instant that the injuries were survivable. That Sam had done something, anything at the last minute and chased the hell hounds off and saved his dumbass brother, his stupid, self-sacrificing God-damned hero of a brother from burning in Hell.

But whatever Sam had done, and he'd sure as shit done something, he hadn't managed to save Dean.

Bobby could feel a sound rising in his chest, a wail of grief and loss and pain and anger fighting to get free but he clamped down hard on it, held it in place. A man shouldn't outlive his children even those that were his only by the unhappy circumstance that they kept coming around. Asking for his help. Drinking his damned beer. Dying. He reached out a hand. Fingers against faded flannel he could feel the fine tremors running just under the boy's skin. "Sam?"

As Sam began to turn, Bobby was suddenly afraid of what he'd see.

But the anger he expected wasn't there. All he could see was a young man who'd had more than enough grief in his life. Who'd lost his mother and his father and his girl and his brother and all of them under horrific circumstances. Sam cradled his brother's head on his lap, silently weeping, his tears falling to land on mercifully unmarred flesh so it seemed like Dean cried with him. And that was the Winchester boys in a nutshell. So tangled up in each other even Death couldn't entirely separate them.

Hadn't been able to yet, anyway.

But this time…

Well, if Sam wasn't going to get angry, Bobby figured he'd get angry for him.

"Where is she?" he growled.

"Gone."

"Gone?" Yeah, he'd figured that, her not being here and Sam being alive and all. "Where?"

"I don't know. She… and I… I mean, I sent her somewhere. After…" Sam glanced down at this brother's face and moved his hand just far enough so he could gently brush a tear away with his thumb. "She was going to… I don't _know._ "

"And Ruby?"

Sam shrugged. "Lilith was in her body. Ruby's gone." 

So much for any help the demon might've been able to give. Truth be told, he'd figured she'd been lying from the get go. Lying to all of them. One lie to Sam. Another to Dean. And a third to him. "Well," he said, matter-of-fact, "I figure I killed this body a long time ago so, bottom line, she was just keeping it warm."

"Warm," Sam repeated, so softly Bobby thought he might've been hearing things.

"Sam?"

"If she can keep this body warm, she can keep Dean's body warm." He set Dean's head carefully down on the blood stained carpet -- which was when Bobby realized Dean's eyes were still open and wasn't that creepy as fuck -- rocked back onto his heels, and stood.

And kept standing. Jesus. When did the boy get so God-damned big?

"Sam?"

When Sam looked down, Bobby felt his heart stop in his chest. Damn it, he knew that expression. It belonged to John Winchester and it went hand in fucking hand with the kind of obsession that went with getting everyone around you killed.

"I'm getting him back." No doubt in his voice.

Bobby sighed and shifted his grip on the shotgun. "Boy, you even look at a crossroad and I'll shoot you myself. It'll pain me but it'll save us all a lot of grief in the long run."

"No crossroad, Bobby. We're long past that." 

"Somehow, that doesn't sound particularly reassuring."

Sam didn't answer, just took a deep breath, focused his gaze on something Bobby couldn't see -- didn't want to see -- and called.   "Ruby!."

"What the…"

"RUBY!"

"Sam!"

" **RUBY!** "

Power in a name. Power in three. And they'd known for some time now there was power in Sam Winchester. His summons echoed in blood and bone and damned if the girl on the floor didn't twitch and cough and open her eyes. Black eyes. Rim to rim. Bobby glanced over at Sam but he didn't look surprised. Or satisfied. Just determined. He swung the barrel of the gun around as Ruby sat up, blinked the black away, and looked around.

Her lip curled. "So she won."

Bobby reluctantly gave her points for keeping her shit together when she'd just been slammed back into the meat she'd been evicted from.

"Not exactly."

Sam's tone was scaring the piss out of him but Ruby just sniffed as she stood and gave a kind of shimmy to settle all the bits into place.

"Oh please." Her gaze dropped to Dean's body. "Your brother's in Hell. Since that's exactly what we were trying to prevent, how is that not exactly winning? Or more specifically not exactly losing? You should've listened to me, Sammy."

And Bobby would swear until the day he died -- not that he'd have to wait long given the company he was keeping -- that the world stopped for an instant. Actually, literally, impossibly stopped. When it started up again, it was a different place.

Ruby seemed to know it too because her eyes opened real wide as Sam said quietly, "Only he gets to call me that." Her head snapped back and the black smoke poured out and Sam reached out with one big hand and somehow yanked that smoke down and thrust it into Dean's body. Tattoo'd been ripped to shit by the hell hounds so there was nothing stopping it.

Bobby turned as the girl crumpled again and was just in time to see a flash of black cover the emerald of Dean's eyes before Sam leaned down and closed them. 

"Oh no," he growled softly, "you're staying in there to keep things warm but you don't get to _do_ anything. If you're good, you might survive the experience." 

Damned if Ruby hadn't taught Sam to use his power after all. Crash course. On the job training as it were. And maybe...  
  
No.  


Because the thing was, Bobby reminded himself, he'd failed Dean -- left him alone, too wrapped up in his own grief to realize how broken the boy was. Left him alone and he'd gone off and sold his soul. Maybe started the beginning of the end by doing it too. That was over and done with though, no use gnawing at it, but he wasn't going to fail Sam.

He swung the butt of the shotgun up in a vicious arc right at the back of Sam's head. Same big hand that'd gripped the demon smoke came back and caught it easy as anything. Didn't pull the weapon out of his hand, just held it and looked at him. Bobby looked back because as much as it was killing him, he had to know if it was Sam in there.

"It is."

"You reading my mind, boy?"

"You've got a crap pokerface, Bobby." He sighed then, let go of the gun like he knew he was safe, and repeated, "I'm getting him back." Then he bent and he lifted Dean's body until he held him, cradled in his arms, head resting over his heart.

Dean Winchester was not a small man. Folk got used to thinking of him as _smaller_ given how he was usually standing next to his brother, but he was over six foot and wearing the kind of muscle that meant something. Sam lifted him like he weighed nothing at all. His boots made a squelching sound as they lifted in turn off the blood soaked carpet and he left red foot prints behind him as he headed for the door.

Bobby found his voice just before Sam stepped over the threshold. "Where you planning on taking him, Sam?"

Sam didn't turn. "Wyoming."

"Wyom… Jesus." And that was mostly a prayer. "The gate."

"The gate."

His hands were damp around the shotgun. "The colt's gone. You don't got a key."

"I don't need one."

"You don't need one?" Bobby crossed the room, his own footprints none too clean, and grabbed Sam's shoulder. Didn't so much turn the younger man around as pull himself past Dean's dangling arm so he could look up into Sam's face. "What the hell do you plan to do? Kick the door down?"

Sam showed teeth because you sure as hell couldn't call what he did with his mouth a smile. "That's exactly what I'm going to do."

"You can't," Bobby began. Stopped. Hell, maybe he could. Reaching out, Bobby laid his hand lightly against Dean's cheek. Didn't feel warm but it didn't feel cold either. "And your brother's body?"

"I'll leave him in the Impala parked inside a Devil's Trap. They won't be able to get to it."

And Ruby wouldn't be able to escape, Bobby noted silently, although Sam didn't say that. Didn't need to say that most likely. Seemed like the boy had thought it through. "So, let's just be clear about this. You're going to drive your brother's body, currently being babysat by a demon we got no reason to trust, to a cemetery in Wyoming where you're going to leave him in a muscle car, kick open a door to Hell, charge in demonically given psychic powers blazing, and haul your brother's soul back out?"

"Yes."

"Okay then." He squeezed past and out into the hallway. "I'll just check to see that the way is clear."

"Bobby…"

"Shut up, Sam." Way he saw it, he had two choices. Believe Sam was still Sam and that he could save his brother... or not.

The demons of Lilith's little bodyguard were gone. Well, okay, maybe not entirely _gone_ since Bobby was pretty damned sure he could hear screaming in the distance but they weren't hanging around the front of the house anymore so Bobby was counting that as a win. Mostly a win. He hated the thought of leaving them running around out there.

"Sam?"

The distant screaming stopped.

Might've been a coincidence. Bobby didn't think so.

Sam wasn't even breathing hard when they reached the Impala, parked for safety some five blocks away. He just laid Dean's body gently down in the backseat, stuffed a duffle bag full of clothes under his brother's head, and touched his face much the way Bobby had back in the hall before he straightened and closed the car door as reverently as possible. Hinge was sticking again so reverently ended up more of a hard slam. 

When he turned, he shook his hair back off his face, and sighed like he'd been feeling the weight of Bobby's eyes on him the whole time. "Going to tell me what you're thinking?" he asked, the words as much a warning as a question.

"I'm thinking that I'm driving and you can use that psychic brain of yours to keep the highway patrol off our tail."

For the first time since he'd called for Ruby, Sam looked unsure. "I'm not sure it works like that."

"Make it work like that. Now give me the keys and get in the car. Winchesters," he muttered sliding into the driver's seat. "More damned trouble -- and oh do I mean that literally -- more damned trouble than you're worth."

"You could always…"

"Zip it, boy. And find me some music in that head banging collection of your brother's that won't make my ears bleed. It's going to be a long drive."

"Bobby?"

"Sam."

"I have no intention of dying for Dean. I'm planning on making him live for me."

"Send the sentiment to Hallmark, son."

He was thinking as he hit the on ramp to the highway, pushed the pedal to the floor, and felt the Impala's engine roar in response, that John Winchester had fought his way out of Hell. Who was to say that his boys -- their boys -- couldn't do the same?

Not Bobby Singer, that was for sure.

For damned sure. 


End file.
